Free Coursework

Changing gender roles

Children
learn from their parents and society the conception of "feminine" and
"masculine." Much about these conceptions is not biological at all
but cultural. The way we tend to think about men and women and their gender
roles in society constitute the prevailing paradigm that influences out
thinking. Riane Eisler points out that the prevailing paradigm makes it
difficult for us to analyze properly the roles of men and women in prehistory
"we have a cultural bias that we bring to the effort and that colors our
decision-making processes." Sexism is the result of that bias imposed by
our process of acculturation.

Gender
roles in Western societies have been changing rapidly in recent years, with the
changes created both by evolutionary changes in society, including economic
shifts which have altered the way people work and indeed which people work as
more and more women enter the workforce, and by perhaps pressure brought to
make changes because of the perception that the traditional social structure
was inequitable. Gender relations are a part of the socialization process, the
initiation given the young by society, teaching them certain values and
creating in them certain behavior patterns acceptable to their social roles.
These roles have been in a state of flux in American society in recent years,
and men and women today can be seen as having expanded their roles in society,
with women entering formerly male dominions and men finding new ways to relate
to and function in the family unit.

When I was
growing up a woman was never heard of having a job other than a school teacher
or seamstress. Our(women's)job was to take care of the house. We had a big garden
out back from which we got most of our vegetables...A garden is a lot of work you
know...We also had to make clothes when there were none to be had(hand-me-

downs)

Gender can
be defined as a social identity consisting of the role a person is to play
because of his or her sex. There is a diversity in male and female roles,
making it impossible to define gender in terms of narrow male and female
roles. Gender is culturally defined, with significant differences from culture
to culture. These differences are studied by anthropologists to ascertain the
range of behaviors that have developed to define gender and on the forces at
work in the creation of these roles. The role of women in American society was
conditioned by religious attitudes and by the conditions of life that prevailed
through much of American history. The culture of Europe and America was based
for centuries on a patriarchal system in which exclusive ownership of the
female by a given male was considered important, with the result that women
were regulated to the role of property with no voice in their own fate. The
girl-child was trained from birth to fit the role awaiting her, and as long as
compensations were adequate, women were relatively content:

"For
Example, if in return for being a man's property a woman receives economic
security, a full emotional life centering around husband and children, and an
opportunity to express her capacities in the management of her home, she has
little cause for discontent."

While this
statement is arguable in the way it assumes that women are not discontented
under such circumstances, it is clear that for most of history women were
expected to be content with this sort of life and were trained for that
purpose. Clearly, circumstances of family life have changed in the modern
era. Industry has been taken out of the home, and large families are no longer
economically possible or socially desired. The home is no longer the center of
the husband's life, and for the traditional wife there is only a narrowing of
interests and possibilities for development: "Increasingly, the woman
finds herself without an occupation and with an unsatisfactory emotional
life." The change in sex roles that can be discerned in society is
closely tied with changes in the structure of the family. Changes in both
family structure and sex roles over the last century have produced the ferment
we still see today, and one of the problems with the changing role of women is
the degree to which society perceives this is causing unwanted changes in the
family, though it is just as true that changes in the family have altered the
roles of women.

As women
entered the early 1990s, they faced a number of problems. Most of these
problems have been around for some time, and women have challenged them and
even alleviated them without solving them completely. They are encountered in
the workplace, in the home, in every facet of life. Women have made advances
toward the equality they seek only to encounter a backlash in the form of
religious fundamentalism, claims of reverse discrimination by males, and
hostility from a public that thinks the women's movement has won everything it
wanted and should thus now be silent. Both the needs of women today and the
backlash that has developed derive from the changes in social and sexual roles
that have taken place in the period since World War II. These changes involve
the new ability of women to break out of the gender roles created for them by a
patriarchal society.

The
desperation women feel has been fed throughout history by the practice of
keeping women in their place by limiting their options. This was accomplished
on one level by preventing women from gaining their the sort of education
offered to men, and while this has changed to a great extent, there are still
inequalities in the opportunities offered to men as opposed to women. Susan
Brownmiller writes:

The sad
history of prohibitions on women's learning is too well known to be recorded
here. . . In much of the world women are barred from advanced knowledge and
technical training

Yet opening the
world of business with new opportunities for women does not dissipate much of
this frustration because both men and women continue to be ruled by their early
training, by the acculturation process which decides for them what sort of
existence they will have. This can result in feelings of guilt when their
reality and the image they have been taught from childhood do not mesh.

It would be
a mistake to see changing gender roles in society as threatening only to males
who dominate that society. Such changes also threaten many women who have
accepted more traditional roles and see change as a threat. "I don't know
how your mother does it all. . . I think time are harder for women these days.
. . so many choices." This response is not new. When women first united
for the right to vote at the beginning of this century, they were opposed by
women's groups who wanted things to remain as they were. Many of these women
were ladies of means and social position in society:

The main
burden of their argument was that woman suffrage placed an additional and
unbearable burden on women, whose place was in the home. . .

These arguments
are heard today from religious fundamentalists who believe that the women's
movement is a threat to the family. The fact is that the family has changed
and that the traditional family structure of homemaker, husband as breadwinner,
and children bow constitutes only 10 percent of families. The role for women
has expanded with more women in the workplace and with a variety of family
structures with new roles for all members of the family. Business has been
slow to change and to acknowledge the new family, and for all the complaints
about the women's movement as anti-family, the movement has instead followed
the trend of placing the family in the forefront of addressing family issues as
vital to women.

There is
much evidence that boys and girls are treated differently form birth, and this
fact has been noted in every world culture:

It may
never be possible to separate out the precise effects of physiology and
cultural conditioning on human beings. Not only do they individually influence
people but they interact with each other and with each person's unique essence
to affect human behavior. To accord with the reality of this complex interplay
of factors, and to accord with an increasingly complex external world,
feminists ask simply for options in life styles.

Those stuck in
sexism, however, cannot grant even the simple request to ask why women are
inferior. The reason sexism exists at all is because of an acculturation
process which subtly creates it, and it is perpetuated in part for that reason
and also because perceived changes in the roles and status of women create a
backlash based on fear of change.

Surveys
have shown that identical resumes or scholarly articles are rated lower if the
applicant is though to be a woman rather than a man: "Man's success is
more likely to be attributed to ability and woman's to luck." While
advances have been made over the last decade, the challenge remains for the
next, and "as long as women constitute small minorities in nontraditional
employment contexts, substantial obstacles will remain." The women in
the workplace must work harder to succeed than their male counterparts, and
once they have succeeded they have to deal with the envy and anxiety this
arouses. Women who do not advance only confirm the stereotype for others:

The
perception remains that women can't make it by conventional

standards,
or are less committed to doing so. In either event, they do

not seem to
warrant the same investment in training, assistance,

and
promotion opportunities as their male counterparts.

Feminist
theorists have been calling for some time for a change in the political climate.
They want more than just more women in office and the political arena; they
want a new type of political thinking, one that empowers people rather than
government and that addresses the issues that are of importance to men and
women:

If we can
eliminate the false polarities and appreciate the limits and

true
potential of women's power, we will be able to join with men

--follow or
lead-in the new human politics that must emerge beyond

reaction.
This new human liberation will enable us to take back the

day and the
night, and use the precious and limited resources of our earth and the
limitless resources of our human capital to erect new kinds of homes for all
our dreams. . .

The
perception the public has had on the role of men and women is outdated and has
been for some time, but public attitudes change slowly even in the face of
overwhelming evidence. More than 40 years ago, anthropologist Margaret Mead
noted the way the West had developed its concept of male and female:

There has
long been a habit in Western civilization of men to have

a picture
of womanhood to which women reluctantly conformed,

and for
women to make demands on man to which men adjusted

even more
reluctantly. This has been a accurate picture of the way in

which we
have structured our society, with women as keepers of the

house who
insist that the man wipe their feet on the door-mat, and

men as keepers of
women in the house who insist that their
wives should stay
modestly indoors.

Today, people are
far less willing to accept these artificial roles even reluctantly, and this
includes the provision keeping women in the home and out of the public arena.
To have more women in office it is necessary to have more women run.

As noted,
public views change more slowly than the reality of gender roles. They will
continue to change slowly as long as we continue acculturating children with
the same sexual stereotypes that have so long prevailed. It is necessary that
we address this issue from early childhood, with parents demonstrating a
different view of gender and sexual roles just as the school and church should
take a part in eliminating the old stereotypes in favor of a more reasonable
and equitable way to view both men and women.

Children
learn from their parents and society the conception of "feminine" and
"masculine." Much about these conceptions is not biological at all
but cultural. The way we tend to think about men and women and their gender
roles in society constitute the prevailing paradigm that influences out
thinking. Riane Eisler points out that the prevailing paradigm makes it
difficult for us to analyze properly the roles of men and women in prehistory
"we have a cultural bias that we bring to the effort and that colors our
decision-making processes." Sexism is the result of that bias imposed by
our process of acculturation.

Gender
roles in Western societies have been changing rapidly in recent years, with the
changes created both by evolutionary changes in society, including economic
shifts which have altered the way people work and indeed which people work as
more and more women enter the workforce, and by perhaps pressure brought to
make changes because of the perception that the traditional social structure
was inequitable. Gender relations are a part of the socialization process, the
initiation given the young by society, teaching them certain values and
creating in them certain behavior patterns acceptable to their social roles.
These roles have been in a state of flux in American society in recent years,
and men and women today can be seen as having expanded their roles in society,
with women entering formerly male dominions and men finding new ways to relate
to and function in the family unit.

When I was
growing up a woman was never heard of having a job other than a school teacher
or seamstress. Our(women's)job was to take care of the house. We had a big garden
out back from which we got most of our vegetables...A garden is a lot of work you
know...We also had to make clothes when there were none to be had(hand-me-

downs)

Gender can
be defined as a social identity consisting of the role a person is to play
because of his or her sex. There is a diversity in male and female roles,
making it impossible to define gender in terms of narrow male and female
roles. Gender is culturally defined, with significant differences from culture
to culture. These differences are studied by anthropologists to ascertain the
range of behaviors that have developed to define gender and on the forces at
work in the creation of these roles. The role of women in American society was
conditioned by religious attitudes and by the conditions of life that prevailed
through much of American history. The culture of Europe and America was based
for centuries on a patriarchal system in which exclusive ownership of the
female by a given male was considered important, with the result that women
were regulated to the role of property with no voice in their own fate. The
girl-child was trained from birth to fit the role awaiting her, and as long as
compensations were adequate, women were relatively content:

"For
Example, if in return for being a man's property a woman receives economic
security, a full emotional life centering around husband and children, and an
opportunity to express her capacities in the management of her home, she has
little cause for discontent."

While this
statement is arguable in the way it assumes that women are not discontented
under such circumstances, it is clear that for most of history women were
expected to be content with this sort of life and were trained for that
purpose. Clearly, circumstances of family life have changed in the modern
era. Industry has been taken out of the home, and large families are no longer
economically possible or socially desired. The home is no longer the center of
the husband's life, and for the traditional wife there is only a narrowing of
interests and possibilities for development: "Increasingly, the woman
finds herself without an occupation and with an unsatisfactory emotional
life." The change in sex roles that can be discerned in society is
closely tied with changes in the structure of the family. Changes in both
family structure and sex roles over the last century have produced the ferment
we still see today, and one of the problems with the changing role of women is
the degree to which society perceives this is causing unwanted changes in the family,
though it is just as true that changes in the family have altered the roles of
women.

As women
entered the early 1990s, they faced a number of problems. Most of these
problems have been around for some time, and women have challenged them and even
alleviated them without solving them completely. They are encountered in the
workplace, in the home, in every facet of life. Women have made advances
toward the equality they seek only to encounter a backlash in the form of
religious fundamentalism, claims of reverse discrimination by males, and
hostility from a public that thinks the women's movement has won everything it
wanted and should thus now be silent. Both the needs of women today and the
backlash that has developed derive from the changes in social and sexual roles
that have taken place in the period since World War II. These changes involve
the new ability of women to break out of the gender roles created for them by a
patriarchal society.

The
desperation women feel has been fed throughout history by the practice of
keeping women in their place by limiting their options. This was accomplished
on one level by preventing women from gaining their the sort of education
offered to men, and while this has changed to a great extent, there are still
inequalities in the opportunities offered to men as opposed to women. Susan
Brownmiller writes:

The sad
history of prohibitions on women's learning is too well known to be recorded
here. . . In much of the world women are barred from advanced knowledge and
technical training

Yet opening the
world of business with new opportunities for women does not dissipate much of
this frustration because both men and women continue to be ruled by their early
training, by the acculturation process which decides for them what sort of
existence they will have. This can result in feelings of guilt when their
reality and the image they have been taught from childhood do not mesh.

It would be
a mistake to see changing gender roles in society as threatening only to males
who dominate that society. Such changes also threaten many women who have
accepted more traditional roles and see change as a threat. "I don't know
how your mother does it all. . . I think time are harder for women these days.
. . so many choices." This response is not new. When women first united
for the right to vote at the beginning of this century, they were opposed by
women's groups who wanted things to remain as they were. Many of these women
were ladies of means and social position in society:

The main
burden of their argument was that woman suffrage placed an additional and
unbearable burden on women, whose place was in the home. . .

These arguments
are heard today from religious fundamentalists who believe that the women's movement
is a threat to the family. The fact is that the family has changed and that
the traditional family structure of homemaker, husband as breadwinner, and
children bow constitutes only 10 percent of families. The role for women has
expanded with more women in the workplace and with a variety of family
structures with new roles for all members of the family. Business has been
slow to change and to acknowledge the new family, and for all the complaints
about the women's movement as anti-family, the movement has instead followed
the trend of placing the family in the forefront of addressing family issues as
vital to women.

There is
much evidence that boys and girls are treated differently form birth, and this
fact has been noted in every world culture:

It may
never be possible to separate out the precise effects of physiology and
cultural conditioning on human beings. Not only do they individually influence
people but they interact with each other and with each person's unique essence
to affect human behavior. To accord with the reality of this complex interplay
of factors, and to accord with an increasingly complex external world,
feminists ask simply for options in life styles.

Those stuck in
sexism, however, cannot grant even the simple request to ask why women are
inferior. The reason sexism exists at all is because of an acculturation
process which subtly creates it, and it is perpetuated in part for that reason
and also because perceived changes in the roles and status of women create a
backlash based on fear of change.

Surveys
have shown that identical resumes or scholarly articles are rated lower if the
applicant is though to be a woman rather than a man: "Man's success is
more likely to be attributed to ability and woman's to luck." While
advances have been made over the last decade, the challenge remains for the
next, and "as long as women constitute small minorities in nontraditional
employment contexts, substantial obstacles will remain." The women in
the workplace must work harder to succeed than their male counterparts, and
once they have succeeded they have to deal with the envy and anxiety this
arouses. Women who do not advance only confirm the stereotype for others:

The
perception remains that women can't make it by conventional

standards,
or are less committed to doing so. In either event, they do

not seem to
warrant the same investment in training, assistance,

and
promotion opportunities as their male counterparts.

Feminist
theorists have been calling for some time for a change in the political
climate. They want more than just more women in office and the political
arena; they want a new type of political thinking, one that empowers people
rather than government and that addresses the issues that are of importance to
men and women:

If we can
eliminate the false polarities and appreciate the limits and

true
potential of women's power, we will be able to join with men

--follow or
lead-in the new human politics that must emerge beyond

reaction.
This new human liberation will enable us to take back the

day and the
night, and use the precious and limited resources of our earth and the
limitless resources of our human capital to erect new kinds of homes for all
our dreams. . .

The
perception the public has had on the role of men and women is outdated and has
been for some time, but public attitudes change slowly even in the face of
overwhelming evidence. More than 40 years ago, anthropologist Margaret Mead
noted the way the West had developed its concept of male and female:

There has
long been a habit in Western civilization of men to have

a picture
of womanhood to which women reluctantly conformed,

and for
women to make demands on man to which men adjusted

even more
reluctantly. This has been a accurate picture of the way in

which we
have structured our society, with women as keepers of the

house who
insist that the man wipe their feet on the door-mat, and

men as keepers of
women in the house who insist that their wives should
stay modestly indoors.

Today, people are
far less willing to accept these artificial roles even reluctantly, and this
includes the provision keeping women in the home and out of the public arena.
To have more women in office it is necessary to have more women run.

As noted,
public views change more slowly than the reality of gender roles. They will
continue to change slowly as long as we continue acculturating children with
the same sexual stereotypes that have so long prevailed. It is necessary that
we address this issue from early childhood, with parents demonstrating a
different view of gender and sexual roles just as the school and church should
take a part in eliminating the old stereotypes in favor of a more reasonable
and equitable way to view both men and women.

Children
learn from their parents and society the conception of "feminine" and
"masculine." Much about these conceptions is not biological at all
but cultural. The way we tend to think about men and women and their gender
roles in society constitute the prevailing paradigm that influences out
thinking. Riane Eisler points out that the prevailing paradigm makes it
difficult for us to analyze properly the roles of men and women in prehistory
"we have a cultural bias that we bring to the effort and that colors our
decision-making processes." Sexism is the result of that bias imposed by
our process of acculturation.

Gender
roles in Western societies have been changing rapidly in recent years, with the
changes created both by evolutionary changes in society, including economic
shifts which have altered the way people work and indeed which people work as
more and more women enter the workforce, and by perhaps pressure brought to
make changes because of the perception that the traditional social structure
was inequitable. Gender relations are a part of the socialization process, the
initiation given the young by society, teaching them certain values and
creating in them certain behavior patterns acceptable to their social roles.
These roles have been in a state of flux in American society in recent years,
and men and women today can be seen as having expanded their roles in society,
with women entering formerly male dominions and men finding new ways to relate
to and function in the family unit.

When I was
growing up a woman was never heard of having a job other than a school teacher
or seamstress. Our(women's)job was to take care of the house. We had a big garden
out back from which we got most of our vegetables...A garden is a lot of work you
know...We also had to make clothes when there were none to be had(hand-me-

downs)

Gender can
be defined as a social identity consisting of the role a person is to play
because of his or her sex. There is a diversity in male and female roles,
making it impossible to define gender in terms of narrow male and female
roles. Gender is culturally defined, with significant differences from culture
to culture. These differences are studied by anthropologists to ascertain the
range of behaviors that have developed to define gender and on the forces at
work in the creation of these roles. The role of women in American society was
conditioned by religious attitudes and by the conditions of life that prevailed
through much of American history. The culture of Europe and America was based
for centuries on a patriarchal system in which exclusive ownership of the
female by a given male was considered important, with the result that women
were regulated to the role of property with no voice in their own fate. The
girl-child was trained from birth to fit the role awaiting her, and as long as
compensations were adequate, women were relatively content:

"For
Example, if in return for being a man's property a woman receives economic
security, a full emotional life centering around husband and children, and an
opportunity to express her capacities in the management of her home, she has
little cause for discontent."

While this
statement is arguable in the way it assumes that women are not discontented
under such circumstances, it is clear that for most of history women were
expected to be content with this sort of life and were trained for that
purpose. Clearly, circumstances of family life have changed in the modern
era. Industry has been taken out of the home, and large families are no longer
economically possible or socially desired. The home is no longer the center of
the husband's life, and for the traditional wife there is only a narrowing of
interests and possibilities for development: "Increasingly, the woman
finds herself without an occupation and with an unsatisfactory emotional
life." The change in sex roles that can be discerned in society is
closely tied with changes in the structure of the family. Changes in both
family structure and sex roles over the last century have produced the ferment
we still see today, and one of the problems with the changing role of women is
the degree to which society perceives this is causing unwanted changes in the
family, though it is just as true that changes in the family have altered the
roles of women.

As women
entered the early 1990s, they faced a number of problems. Most of these
problems have been around for some time, and women have challenged them and
even alleviated them without solving them completely. They are encountered in
the workplace, in the home, in every facet of life. Women have made advances
toward the equality they seek only to encounter a backlash in the form of
religious fundamentalism, claims of reverse discrimination by males, and
hostility from a public that thinks the women's movement has won everything it
wanted and should thus now be silent. Both the needs of women today and the
backlash that has developed derive from the changes in social and sexual roles
that have taken place in the period since World War II. These changes involve
the new ability of women to break out of the gender roles created for them by a
patriarchal society.

The
desperation women feel has been fed throughout history by the practice of
keeping women in their place by limiting their options. This was accomplished
on one level by preventing women from gaining their the sort of education
offered to men, and while this has changed to a great extent, there are still
inequalities in the opportunities offered to men as opposed to women. Susan
Brownmiller writes:

The sad
history of prohibitions on women's learning is too well known to be recorded
here. . . In much of the world women are barred from advanced knowledge and
technical training

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